A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890–1960 by Abigail A. Van Slyck

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 1 - - - , lAManufactured Wilderness : I......,......,...............".... Abigail A. Van Slyck. A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press) 2006) 296 pp.1 black-and-white photographs ) plans) hardcover) S34 951 ISBN o-8166-4876-X In her new book, A Nlamgactured fYildemess, architectural historian Abigail Van Slyck, a "failed camper" herself, sets out to understand the changing imperatives in the operation and design of summer camps in the United States, from their first appearance in the late nineteenth-century through the post-\Vorld \~Var II period. This book is not simply about the built environment of summer camps; it also examines the larger issues of race, class, and gender and how these questions shaped the material culture of camp life. In her introduction, Van Slyck argues for the importance of summer camps as institutions second only to public schools in touching children's lives. Indeed, this book illuminates an understudied area of architectural and historical inquiry that has deserved more attention. Van Slyck's astute analysis is carefully researched and elegantly written-even when the subject is as mundane as the personal hygiene of campers. In the introduction, Van Slyck explains hmv her "cultural landscape" approach differs from traditional architectural histories. She chooses to examine buildings within their built and natural context rather than in isolation, but buildings are only part of the story here. Van Slyck also explores what architectural historian Elizabeth Cromley has called "activity arenas," or areas \vhere campers played or worked. According to 58 ARRIS I VO LU ME NINI:.HEN 2008 Van Slyck, these activity arenas vvere neither necessarily permanent nor formalized, but they vvere nonetheless as important as buildings in understanding the camp's landscape. Thus, in defining architecture as "a process in which institutional priorities are translated into material form," Van Slyck shmvs that this process had less to do vvith aesthetics and named architects than with how camp directors and campers used space on a daily basis (p. x;-.cxi). No activity arena- from large-scale assembly buildings to troughs for human vvaste- is left unexamined in Van Slyck's engrossing study. Van Slyck's argument is that at first glance summer camps may appear to oppose the "artificiality of modern life" (p. 224). But, in fact, "manufactured versions of the wilderness implicitly worked to support and maintain modern culture" (p. 224). The first chapter, "Putting Campers in Their Place: Camp Landscapes and Changing Ideas of Childhood," initiates the analysis of this contradiction. This chapter traces the origins of the camp movement to military-style camps, vvhich promoted both manliness (to counteract the over-feminized Victorian home of male campers) and female patriotism (in girls' camps). Follmving the historic trajectory into the post-war years, Van Slyck shovvs how camps were artificial in their protective, picturesque landscapes. Subsequent chapters trace changing notions tovvard play. At the turn of the twentieth century, play tended to be unstructured, but as the century wore on, structured -and therefore, safe- play became more prevalent . This change paralleled nevv attitudes of children as "priceless." New building types emerged in tandem ,,vith structured activities; log cabins, for example, frequently functioned as spaces for making crafts. According to Van Slyck, these buildings evoked a preindustrial, frontier life, highlighting the artificiaJity of this "manufactured" wilderness. Van Slyck also discusses various types of housing and their placement within the camp landscape. Early efforts to use traditional tents were soon abandoned in favor of more substantial cabins that better resembled domestic architecture. The purpose of these cabins was to critique "unscientific" parenting, vvhich was blamed for bO')'S' bad behavior. According to Van Slyck, camp directors took an increasingly scientific approach-for example, taking measurements of boys at the beginning and end of the camp season, in order to counteract what they perceived as bad parenting at home. These home-like cabins, then, served as "seasonal surrogates," offsetting the influence of supposed negative factors at home (p. 122). Van Slyck explains that while early camps involved campers vvith food production, as time passed, kitchen technologies increasingly separated children from the adults who prepared meals. This section of her book relies...